Better
by Runawaymetaphor
Summary: It isn't just that there are fewer good days than there used to be. It's that 'good' has become a relative term.


**Better**

* * *

As they walk along the corridor, they pass a smattering of crewmembers.

Some people nod. Others smile after a brief hesitation.

Most, however, look away.

The expressions of both open horror and thinly-veiled surprise have long-since faded. The twosome are now an accepted sight; their daily walks after his shift an expected public occurrence, and that he is her closest companion these days a well-known fact.

Still, the sight is not a comfortable one for the crew. And Tom is just relieved that most days, the woman next to him doesn't notice.

Janeway's hair is pinned back the way she used to wear it when they first started their voyage, almost seventeen years ago, and her spine is perfectly erect. Yet, something about the way her arms hang bespeaks her unease, and every few minutes, when another crewmember passes them and ducks their face, she shoots Paris a nervous glance.

Kathryn Janeway scared is admittedly still a strange sight for Tom, though it's one he has now seen many times and in a multitude of forms. He tries to tuck this feeling away as, sighing inwardly, he calls for the turbolift.

When the doors open, Ken Dalby steps out, practically running into both of them. The officer begins to sputter an apology without even thinking.

"I'm so sorry, Captain," Ken says, before recognition washes over him and his face pales.

Janeway, mercifully, says nothing. She only looks to Paris, who smiles warmly at the other man before entering the lift.

"See you on the bridge Ken," Tom calls, but Dalby is already quickly retreating from them.

Paris fights the urge to sigh again as they slide onto the lift silently, the doors swishing shut in front of them.

He used to find such hasty exits hurtful. Even cowardly. After all, this isn't something to hold against Janeway, to run the other direction from. Especially after she'd given them all so much of herself, for so many years.

But now, Tom understands the impulse. He even feels like running himself sometimes, though he never actually does.

The last three years have been excruciating, seeing the woman they all love and respect succumbing slowly to the dementia that now thickly clouds her consciousness. And to this day, Tom can still remember the words the future Seven of Nine had spoken when she came to their timeline ten years earlier. The way she argued with Chakotay and Tuvok in Astrometics, after Janeway had shot down her proposal to use the transwarp hub without so much as blinking.

"It will be far worse than death ever could be. She will become a shadow of herself- both there and not there all at once."

Seven's monotone voice alarmed him, as, listening in the corridor, the pilot could hear that it had an unfamiliar edge. The evidence of years and loss.

"You'll silently wish that she had died instead, Seven had continued. "Eventually, that thought will not even cause you guilt. Because you will realize that it is not selfishness. It is loyalty to her. The painful reality that you will be able to do nothing to help her."

Standing in the turbolift next to Janeway presently, Tom wonders what their lives would be like if Chakotay and Tuvok had succeeded in swaying her, back then.

The Doc is good, but there is only so much he could do without the help of Starfleet Medical. He's tried and tired, all of them hopeful given the advance warning, but there's nothing he's found that can stop her deteriorating brain tissue. Nothing he can pinpoint that even explains the random accumulations of proteins in her brain cells, the continuing build up of necrotic nerves.

A dark shadow falls over Paris' face, and Janeway's nervous eyes become filled with concern.

"Everything alright, sir?" she asks, her voice painfully even to his ears.

Today, she thinks he is his father, Owen Paris. She believes that she is an Ensign on her first assignment and he is her CO. That this is the USS Icarus, not Voyager, and that they are on a mission just outside of Cardassian space, rather than barely scrimping by in the Delta Quadrant.

It's difficult. And yet, it's also a relief.

Yesterday, she'd known they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Only she'd thought it had just happened; fresh with guilt and worry, as well as the longing for Earth and her fiancé, Mark.

All things considered, Tom prefers this, as even in her more lucid moments, Janeway is not herself, having virtually no filter on her thoughts when she is alone in his company. Sharing every worry, every passing desire or pain.

He's become as accustomed to this as he can, and doesn't so much resent those more difficult days for his own sake. It's just hard to watch her in when she's in turmoil. To have to sit back, silently, as she tortures herself with choices that have long ago been made, fortunes that have already been decided.

This, he judges, is better.

He likes it when she knows him; greeting him when he chimes at her door with an arched eyebrow as she stares at him over her cup of coffee. But given the choice, he would choose not to see her in pain. He will endure being his father, random characters from her distant past. Even the pilot, Justin Tighe, she'd been engaged to before he died, along with her father, on a frozen planet that was now more than twenty years away from them at high warp.

It isn't just that there are less good days than there used to be. It's that 'good' has become a relative term.

"Have you ever played pool, Kathryn?"

He leans against the side of the lift, arching an eyebrow at her, and she looks back at him with confusion.

"Only twice," she responds with hesitation. "I'm not very good."

Looking at her, he knows she's telling the truth. He taps the wall, coming to a decision.

"Let's see about that, shall we?"

. . . . .

Passing Chakotay in front of the mess hall, Paris casts his eyes downward, hoping to avoid conversation with the man.

Tom had understood when Tuvok had hesitated to spend time with Janeway after his visits began to go awry. Some days she'd known the Vulcan. Other days she hadn't. When she didn't, his stoic presence seemed to startle her, and the Tuvok had become concerned.

"I fear I am not a good companion for her," Tuvok had said to him in the deserted mess hall, more than a year earlier.

It was a simple statement, but Tom knew what he meant. When Janeway cries or grows agitated, Tuvok cannot hold her. He cannot put his chin on the top of her head, remaining close to her until her sobs subside.

Tuvok is patient and loyal. Compassionate and even warm, in his own way. But at the end of the day, he cannot offer her emotional support in the manner she needs, and he isn't blocked from admitting this by pride or selfishness .

Chakotay is another story.

Chakotay had stopped visiting her before Tuvok cut down on his time with her; back when good days were ones when she knew how long they'd been out in the Delta Quadrant. And though the older man has never confided in Tom directly the reasons for his withdrawal, Tom's gathered bits and pieces from B'Elanna and others, as well as random fragments of things Kathryn herself has said.

Though there were days that she welcomed Chakotay's company, there were also times when she'd been angry at him. Some days she hadn't trust his intentions with her, others she yelled at him about marrying Seven.

Chakotay had eventually retreated entirely. And Tom has never managed to get over his horror.

It's the same horror B'Elanna feels over Tom going to see Janeway almost everyday.

"Tom," Chakotay greets, stopping abruptly.

Tom's face looks slightly strained, but he otherwise hides his feelings well. They've been doing this dance for sometime now, and he knows the drill. Chakotay will ask about something innocuous- a report or perhaps something to do with Miral. Eventually, he'll turn the conversation around to Kathryn, and in a round-about way, he'll ask Tom to summarize the daily highs and lows that he now abstains from viewing.

When he finally asks, Tom keeps it short, managing to look worried when he cuts off the conversation.

"I should go, sir. I need to meet her."

Tom's statement is laughable in many respects. The woman he's late to see has no idea he is coming, perhaps no idea who he is.

But he has become the keeper of her memories and the guardian of her dignity. He thinks of her as having a sense of such things, according her all the niceties he did when she was in control of her faculties. In this respect, his concern is completely earnest.

Chakotay nods, excusing him, and Paris feels relief down to his toes.

When Tom gets to her quarters, she is angry at him. Part of him strangely thinks that this is his fault; that she is upset because he wasn't there by his usual hour. The rest of him, however, knows that this is crazy. Her moods and thoughts have little to do with the outside world anymore, and whatever memory that's taken hold of her now is visiting her of its own accord.

She crosses her arms, glaring at him.

"I don't appreciate being handled, Tom," she says finally, and the clarity of her voice- the familiar anger and seeming lucidity- throws him off.

"I'm sorry, I don't follow," he responds, after he wipes the surprise from his face.

"I know the Doctor put you up to dinner the other night. And I don't appreciate the tactic."

Her eyes narrow at him, and his mind whirs, trying to locate the time her thoughts now reside in. He's had practice at this, and it normally only takes him a few moments. But this time, he's lost. He doesn't have much to go on.

"I still don't follow," he says, apologetically, "what tactic did I take with you?"

His tone and posture are too casual, he realizes, because she immediately bristles, raising her hands to her hips.

"Don't you dare play dumb with me, Ensign."

The rank is a helpful clue, as it narrows the time period substantially. He listens intently as she goes on.

"You invited me to a friendly dinner on the holodeck. Only you were really acting on behalf of the Doctor. I suspect you did it so that you could tell him that you got some food and rest in me. Get him off your back about whatever else the rest of the week."

He understands now what she's referring to. It was a dinner they had several months after the incident with the Moneans. She'd agreed, though with some reluctance, to dine with him, and then her hesitance fell away as the evening unfolded. By the end, she'd thrown back her head and laughed when he told her gossip about the crew, their dinner gone and the bottle of wine he'd replicated already empty.

For a week, she'd been friendlier with him. But then, coming into Sickbay for his regular shift, he'd found her with the Doctor, the physical she'd postponed half a dozen times nearly complete. She'd ignored him when he entered, and then gave him an icy look when she left. He didn't understand why. But after that, they didn't eat together again, or even play pool.

"The Doctor didn't put me up to asking you to dinner," he replies.

In front of him, she seems to fume.

"Tom, he told me when I went to Sickbay that it was his idea."

He scratches his face, finally understanding something that has eluded him for nearly twelve years.

"I hurt your feelings? You think the whole thing was just some ploy?"

"Wasn't it?" she spits back, her hands still on her hips.

"No," he responds, his face alight with pain that shouldn't feel as fresh as hers, but somehow still does. "It wasn't. The Doctor said something in passing about wanting you get more rest and relaxation in. But I asked you to dinner because I wanted to spend time with you. Things. . . are difficult since my demotion."

He doesn't hesitate, as he once did, to make sure that what he's saying is in the appropriate tense for her, this manner of conversation having now become second-nature to him. Rather, he hesitates because it is a pain he doesn't want to concentrate on; one he has buried under countless others.

Her hands drop to her sides, and she looks deflated. She sits next to him on the couch, and the way she slumps down onto the cushion breaks the spell for him a bit. This isn't how she carried herself back then, even speaking alone with him in unofficial capacity.

"I'm sorry if you were hurt," he says, genuinely. "I didn't know."

She reaches for his hand, and he lets her take it.

By now, he's learned to be comfortable with physical contact. He's held her when she's shaken so hard from her tears that he worried she couldn't breathe. He's had to find ways of gracefully demurring when she's thought he was another man, running a lithe hand up and down his thigh.

Still, this simple act surprises him. Because, at the moment, she knows exactly who he is, and she's not overcome with grief, nor crushing guilt.

"Why are things always so difficult between us, Tom?"

He lets out a heavy breath. This is something he's wondered countless times, and for a span of years the woman beside him no longer understands.

"I don't have a clue," he breathes, closing his eyes. "But you have to know, despite it all, I would do anything for you. I'd fly directly into a sun if you only asked."

When he opens his eyes, Kathryn is smiling softly.

Tom tries to smile, too, but he's stopped by the thought of how innumerable, slow and tortuous the things are that he would do for her. Most of them making swift, hot oblivion seem like paradise.

. . . . .

As Tom sits on Janeway's couch, he looks at her hesitantly. The last month has been full of bad days, and he doesn't quite trust the present calm.

Twice she's had to be sedated. Once, when she thought she was back in the Cardassian prison, waiting to be tortured while she listened to them torturing Tom's father instead. The other, when she relived the deaths of her father and Justin Tighe.

The first time, she'd hidden in her closet and had to be dragged out kicking and screaming; the second, she'd refused to get out of bed, even to eat or drink. Both times, she'd clung to him desperately in Sickbay, her eyes filled with panic when the Doctor sedated her.

Tom had stood over her prone body, and Chakotay looked at him from the Doctor's office, his eyes filled with any number of emotions the younger man had no desire to parse.

Returning the gaze with open disdain before Chakotay finally turned away.

For all Kathryn's revisited nightmares, there seems to be a buffer that now extends back from the present by about five years. She doesn't remember being relieved of command, or the countless battles the two years before that. She doesn't recall Harry's death.

Tom is grateful for this last part, but he's also curious. The Doctor thinks the gap has to do with the pattern of degeneration in her brain, but Paris sometimes wonders if it might be more than that, Harry's death being right on the precipice of the things she can remember and the things she can't.

He suspects she doesn't want to remember pulling the charred wreckage of the Flyer into the cargo bay. Watching as the crew eventually brought out a body that was too burnt to be recognizable.

Crying, despite all the people around, when she lost the person who'd been the closest thing she would ever have to a son.

Tom knows with certainty he himself would have give five years of his life to get the image of that body out of his head. But he never says this to the Doctor, merely nodding when the hologram spouts theories about patterns of nerve damage and neural pathways.

Today, however, is a good day. And Tom tries to push away the exhaustion and worry he feels in order to appreciate it.

When he entered her quarters this evening, she smiled at him with surprise before asking him to join her in the living area.

This is a ritual Tom accepts, Janeway inviting him each time to sit down as though it's the first time they've spent time alone together in her quarters. In fact, when it happens, it triggers relief in him. It's a sign that there will be no crippling panic or torrents of tears for her tonight.

Now, however, the smile that was on her face is replaced by a thoughtful expression, and she looks at Tom over the mug of coffee he replicated for her.

"What is it?" he asks, unable to take her stare anymore.

Janeway's eyes on him for any length of time has always been disquieting for him. It's just disquieting in a different way now.

Her eyes narrow, and she sits back a little father on the couch.

"I missed you while you were in the brig," she says, holding her mug with both hands.

The tone in which she says it tells Tom that her mind is again hovering at the time period right after his demotion. The pain is fresh in her voice, and it's obvious from the way she looks at him that she isn't sure how to treat him.

"I missed you, too," he responds, his eyes soft and his face open.

Tom's pain from this period also feels new, as this is a wound that never managed to heal. He realizes that despite her neural damage, they often, strangely, find themselves on the same page.

The realization shouldn't come as such a surprise. Tom looks forward to his daily visits with Janeway, and her mood often sets the tone for his week.

Tom isn't a lonely man, by any means. He has genuine friends who sustain him in a way his family back home never did. And fatherhood has made him happier than he ever thought possible.

But still, this woman, at the end of the day, is his preferred companion. It is her, when he wakes each morning,whom he thinks about.

He isn't sure what this says about him, but he tries not to wonder either.

She looks at him and he realizes that she's waiting for him to go first. Waiting for him to open up before she puts her own cards on the table.

"I would take it all back if I could."

His words come without hesitation. He's had a very long time, after all, to think about his actions with the Moneans.

"Would you?" she asks, obviously not believing him.

"I didn't accomplish a damn thing," he shrugs. "Even if I had, the cost was entirely too high."

He isn't talking about the cost to the aliens whose world he tried to save, or even the casualty of his rank, and the look on her face tells him that she understands. She seems relieved, and then the relief morphs into something else that he can't read.

When she stands up from couch and moves to her viewport, he follows her, standing only a few centimeters behind her.

Worried that the emotions circling in this conversation are too much for, he thinks about changing the subject when she turns to him.

"I wondered if you partly did it to hurt me," she confesses, and he's genuinely surprised.

"No," he says, shaking his head vehemently. "I. . . God, no."

He understands where she's coming from. She and B'Elanna had a troubled relationship, and that had, in turn, effected her rapport her with him. Not to mention the fact that he'd felt more than a bit pushed aside when Seven of Nine came on board, and he hadn't exactly hidden it well.

Still, not once had he thought to feel angry. He'd just felt. . . bereft.

The crushed look on his face seems to pain her, and she reaches her hand to his arm.

"You know, I always loved you."

He isn't sure why he blurts it now, after all these years. Maybe it's because she won't remember it after today. Or perhaps it's because he regrets not saying it before, when she would remember.

Strangely, she doesn't look surprised. And then Tom realizes that she already knows. That she always knew.

His mouth flies open, but before he can say anything, she kisses him. His arms fly around her waist, and she leans her body into him.

When she runs her hand up his chest, he realizes what he's doing and pulls away, looking horrified.

"That was wrong, I'm sorry," he says. But, of course, it's an apology she cannot comprehend the exact nature of.

Her grey eyes fill with embarrassment and another, darker emotion.

"B'Elanna," she says, and her tone is as accusing as it is guilt-ridden.

He closes his eyes, worried he's made things even worse by apologizing, by pulling away.

"B'Elanna and I aren't together anymore."

He doesn't use the word 'divorced' in order to avoid confusing her. Still, he feels the strange need to ground this conversation in reality. His reality.

"Oh, Tom. . . I'm sorry, I didn't know."

She looks at him softly, and it reminds him of the way she looked at him four years ago, before her neural degradation hadn't set in yet, nor had Tom's final resignation over the failures of his marriage. He and B'Elanna were still working to get past their troubles, but things between them were often tense, if not completely silent.

Sometimes, in staff meetings, Tom would catch Janeway looking at him with the same sympathetic expression.

It never occurred to him that there was anything else behind it.

"I didn't realize it would matter to you," he confesses. "I didn't think you would ever feel the same way."

Her face becomes distraught again, and she begins to chew her lip.

"Still," she shakes her head, "there's protocol."

She hasn't been in command of a ship for three years, but the irony of all of this is lost on Tom, who finds himself hell-bent on finishing their conversation.

"Protocol wasn't created for a ship in our situation, Kathryn."

At the use of her first name, her eyebrows shoot up, but she doesn't reprimand him. She only looks more resolved.

"I can't pick and choose what rules I follow, Tom. It sends the wrong message."

He could point out that it was always her way to pick and choose what rules to follow, what way to interpret regulations and even the Prime Directive. But this is something he won't say to her, even if she were playing with a full deck.

"It sends the wrong message if you treat yourself as something less than a human being. As something other than an interdependent, fragile creature you encourage the rest of us to embrace being."

As he finishes, the resolution drops from her face and she looks at him with sadness and longing.

"I'm so sick of being alone," she admits in a small voice. And pain immediately materializes in the pit of Tom's stomach.

He'd pressed on in this because he wanted to finally have this conversation; to know what would have happened if he'd actually pushed her back then.

In this moment, he realizes he's been too hard on Chakotay. Understands now that older man must be running away from Janeway because every time she argues with him about the past, he questions what would have been happened if he'd been a little slower to back down at the beginning of their journey.

He must ask himself as well, with creeping dread that likely makes his skin cold, how things would be different if he'd just locked Janeway in her ready room and flown them into the Borg hub. Her feelings of anger and betrayal be damned.

It was so much better not to know, Tom realizes, and the pain in his stomach grows tenfold when she gives him a hopeful smile.

"Perhaps we should have dinner," she says. "Tomorrow, on the holodeck?"

Tomorrow, she won't remember this conversation. Tomorrow, she'll be angry at him for mistakes he made more than a decade ago, or else, she won't even know who he is.

"Sure," he says evenly, and she tugs him to the couch with her hand, resting her head against his shoulder when they sit.

"Better," she breathes, putting her hand on Tom's knee with a contented sigh.

But Tom doesn't respond immediately. His thoughts abruptly and inexplicably captivated by the sensation of flying oneself into a sun.

The welcoming heat, followed by merciful oblivion.

"Much," he responds finally, his tone sincere.


End file.
